Fanfare Please

I left the house today. A friend picked me up. We went got a bagel and coffee. Then we went grocery shopping.

When I got home, I found that my brother had followed through on his promise to send me his Nintento 64 and a bunch of games.

This is the best day of mono ever!

It helps that I am feeling a little better. Who knows maybe I'll be able to go to work again and once more be a productive member of society. I talked to a coworker yesterday. Apparently this whole being out of work for 53 days has done wonders for my image at the office. My boss misses me, but that was to be expected. I run his life. (His mom called me once to confirm the existence of travel insurance. Her other son was trying to assure her that she could buy tickets eight months in advance. She stopped him by saying that she would have to call me first to talk about it before she made a decision. How much would it suck for your mom to tell you that she didn't believe you and she was going to call your brother's assistant to double check your information?) I knew he would miss me. It was the rest of the office I was worried about.

There have been complaints that I spend my time on frivolous things. Here are a list of things I have been asked to do over the years:

1. Research a list of famous people named Art.
2. Find a handgun either non-working, or replica that looks real.
3. Find a local burrito company that will ship frozen burritos to his son in Rhode Island.
4. Find the contact information for the Marketing Director of Philips Norelco so that he can send his electric razor back to them with suggestions.
5. Purchase 25 Magic 8-Balls and figure out a way to affix our logo to them so that we could give them out as "Financial Advisers" to our clients as gifts after the capital markets went into the toilet.
6. Manufacture a scroll that was at least twenty feet long.
7. Design and construct heart glasses and skull & crossbones glasses.
8. Find a doorbell that can ring to a cellphone.
9. Researching any and all products that he finds in the Sky Mall catalog.

These are in addition to my normal office duties like finding a Sandra or Sheila or some name that sounds like that who worked with HUD one time as an attorney. To the casual observer and the other brokers in the office, it appears that I waste a lot of time surfing the web and goofing off. What they never realized is that when I am doing all of this, my boss is not being distracted by all of these ideas.

Since I have been gone, my friend reported that several people have been overheard to be saying that they cannot wait for me to get back to work because He is all over the place. Because I am gone, he is desperately trying to help as much as possible so as not to overburden others. Which means they have to undo everything he does to put it back together again. My coworker told me she has never heard so many people muttering before. They never realized how much of a buffer I provide for them. I probably shouldn't be gloating but I am.

I should have been laid off last year. We have three assistants in an office that went from 29 to 16 people. That office doesn't need three assistants right now. We barely did any deals last year. But, my boss needs me and put himself on the line to keep me. When asked to write out a responsibility list I was ready to go, until I was told to just lump together all of the duties that I perform for him. Here is what that looked like.

1. His tasks.
2. Sort mail.
3. Data Entry.

Doesn't make much of a resume on paper does it? I guess there are just some things that can't be described in words. So, yeah, I'm going to gloat.

By the way, out of all the things I have done for him, the thing he brags about the most is the personalized, rechargeable, Starbucks gift card I got for him (with his own money). He shows that thing off for everyone. It has his name and his drink printed right on the card. Just a little thing, but his makes his life easier. Which makes everyone's life easier as we now all know. And knowing is half the battle. GI JOE!